Stubbed Toes

“Are you merely interested in everything, or also in something specific?”-Samuel Beckett

I spent the majority of my time in graduate school studying the thought of Michael Welker. Welker is a leading German theologian concerned with core Christian doctrines, interdisciplinary research, and to half-quote one of his comments in an interview, “developing flexible systems of thought that retain describable forms.”

Though a theologian, one of the core things that drew me to his work were his seemingly contradictory impulses to examine and make use of grand, overarching theoretical systems of thought, like process philosophy and the systems theory of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, while also arguing for specificity and topicality in making claims. The above from Beckett is perhaps his single favorite quote, playfully hinting at the “productive tensions” (Ricoeur) that characterize his thinking. Welker’s writing implements and weaves together both the universal and the microscopic, being all-encompassing yet also marked by what he describes as a circumspect, “humble, bridge-building” approach to making claims.

A catch-all term for this “binocular focus”* is what he calls “structured pluralism.” One of his best descriptions of this can be found in his most famous work, God the Spirit (1994),” where it is called by another name, that of “realistic theology.” According to Welker realistic theology can be understood as “simultaneously doing two things. On the one hand, it links a number of domains and forms of experience that are in part mutually compatible, and in part can be directly reconciled only with great difficulty, if at all. On the other hand, it remains sensitive to the differences of these realms and forms of experience (x).”

To really understand this way of thinking and how it can help in dealing with the intellectual and practical aporias one encounters in life we must turn to specific, topical examples, which no doubt would please Welker. So, in addition to my personal writing, my upcoming musings on music and my other my interests, I will use this space to unpack by showing, not just telling, what structured pluralism is and how exactly this approach to thinking and theology works.

Important Notes: Regardless of where you stand on the truth-claims of Christianity (and I’m sure in due course where I stand on such things these days will become apparent one way or another), spending time digesting the way Welker reasons is beneficial to all, as it is characterized by precision, rigor, and “agility.”** In other words, there is something here for everyone. Additionally, while my posts on academic subjects like Welker, the philosopher Richard Kearney, and others will (hopefully!) have a bit more intellectual sharpness, my hope is to find ways to make them as fun, accessible, and clumsy as I can. It is a blog, not a book, after all.

*I’m stealing this phrase from a journal article in an old issue of Process Studies, so unfortunately I cannot name the person I am taking this from.

**His former student and now colleague and influential theologian in his own right, Miroslav Volf, once talked about Welker’s “agile mind,” which always struck me as a particularly apt description.